Public Fury, Private Accord

On the sixth day of the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq, fighting reached a paroxysm. The Turkish army claimed to have killed 77 PKK Kurdish separatist fighters, while admitting the loss of five of their own. Meanwhile, convoys of troops were seen heading for the border, and F16 warplanes wheeled overhead. An operation that Ankara initially insisted would have a "clear and limited" focus on a force of Kurds mounting attacks on Turkey is growing in intensity and scale. So too are the warnings from the rest of the world. The latest came from the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who before arriving in Turkey yesterday said the operation must not last longer than a week or two.

Turkey's envoy in Baghdad replied that its forces had been given no timetable to reach their military objective - the destruction of the PKK's bases in the Qandil mountains. But behind the scenes a different picture emerges. It was already known that there had been telephone calls between the Turkish and Iraqi presidents, Abdullah Gul and Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, and between the respective prime ministers, Recep Erdogan and Nouri al-Maliki. What is more surprising is the claim from senior diplomatic sources yesterday that Baghdad gave Ankara its consent for an operation that compromises Iraqi sovereignty. A reciprocal assurance has been given by the Turkish government: the operation will last only another three or four days.

If everyone keeps their word then the future of Turkey's relationship with the Kurds of northern Iraq may not prove to be as bleak as was first feared. Remember that Mr Talabani's real fear was that Turkey was using its sporadic war with the PKK as a pretext to flex regional muscles at the very time when the status of Kirkuk was being discussed. Kurds, Turkomans and Iraqi Arabs all lay rival claims to the oil-rich city just south of the Kurdish zone. Generations of Turkish generals view an autonomous Kurdistan as a stepping stone towards a future state that could split the Turkish nation. Even though Mr Erdogan is a liberal in this debate, and has done more for the Turkey's 20 million Kurds in the past five years than his predecessors have done in decades, he would have ignored the PKK's cross-border attacks last year at his domestic peril.

If the fragile set of diplomatic understandings between Ankara, Baghdad and Washington survive the fighting then it will be something of a first for the region. But a swift Turkish withdrawal should be accompanied by a rethink of how it deals with the PKK. Its bases may be wiped out, but they will surely regroup and return. Military operations alone will never solve this conflict.